Putnam supports financial rescue plan

Monday

Sep 29, 2008 at 12:08 PMSep 29, 2008 at 11:43 PM

WASHINGTON - Congressman Adam Putnam of Bartow has announced his support for the national financial rescue plan that was hammered out by congressional and Bush administration negotiators over the weekend.

Below is the video clip and transcript of Putnam’s remarks on the House floor this morning in support of the rescue plan.

PUTNAM: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I thank the gentleman from Alabama for yielding. There's an old Chinese proverb: ‘may you live in interesting times.’ These are interesting and remarkable times. The past two weeks we’ve seen the five largest investment banks in the United States be reduced to two. Last week the largest bank in the United States failed. Over 2,000 branches spread out across this country, retail outlets, where ordinary Americans, downtown merchants, farmers, students, seniors, savers relied on that bank to meet their needs. It failed last week.

This morning another major bank on the brink of collapse was purchased for $1 a share. Last week, a money market fund announced that for the first time they had broken the buck, they could not guarantee that every dollar that you put into that money market account would be retrievable on your request. And a second major money market account announced they were closing and not accepting any new deposits for fear of the same thing happening to them.

Now, when you get beyond credit swaps and derivatives and all these complicated things that obviously not even the Wall Street traders who were engaging in them understood, and start talking about the bank on the corner failing, and the money market funds where every small business holds their payroll, where every saver is trying to ring out an extra half a point of interest, you have reached main street.

You are now standing at the brink of a financial collapse that is well beyond the financial capitals of the world. And I also failed to mention, since we are not just talking about an American problem, that this weekend alone three of the largest banks in Europe either failed or were nationalized. So we live in interesting times.

And we are watching one domino after another fall that are the pillars of our financial system here in the United States.

Now, I tried to think of the right analogy and it dawned on me that, you know, being from Florida we get a lot of hurricanes. And in 2004 we had three hurricanes come across central Florida, my home. In nine weeks. Bam-bam-bam. And then a year later we watched a storm come across Florida and build in the Gulf and it got bigger and bigger and moved faster and faster and had a bull's-eye on New Orleans. And I, like a lot of Americans, wondered why more people weren't leaving? Why more people weren't heeding the warnings that were so obvious from the weather map of what was building into a monster in the Gulf of Mexico. If you ever wondered why people don't get out of the way of an oncoming storm, a hurricane that is barreling down on top of you, despite days of notice, despite satellite imagery, despite all of the best advancements in communications, then you have to apply that same analogy to what we are seeing now.

One bank after another failing, rolling out of New York, rolling out of Brussels, out of London, out of these places that seem so foreign into our Main Streets, into our merchant associations, into our farmer cooperatives. You're watching this happen, so how could you as a Member of Congress in seeing that roll across the countryside, not do everything in your power to prevent it?

Now, the previous speaker made an outstanding reference to the fact that congress is known for producing fairly bad legislation in the aftermath of a crisis. What we have before us today is an attempt to avert that crisis and all of the rushed legislation that would follow a collapse, the likes of which we have not seen in this country since the 1930s.

This bill is a substantially different bill than what Secretary Paulson and the president sent up here a week ago.

It is a better bill than what they sent up here, and it is a bipartisan bill. We talked about how remarkable these times are.

Last week, two candidates who have spent two years, two difficult, hard fought years, looking for a way to beat the other one to become the next President of the United states, both hit the pause button and released a joint statement of principles in agreement that Congress needs to act to avert a financial collapse.

This body has come together to produce a bill that is distasteful to most. That required both sides to give up many of the individual items that they thought would be helpful: pro-growth capital gains policies that Republicans thought would be helpful. Affordable housing trust funds issues that the Democrats thought would be helpful. Both gone from the draft of this bill.

And instead focusing on the central goal which is to avert the financial collapse that all of the experts and all of the evidence and all of the bank failures and all of the money market closings indicate is very possible if Congress doesn't act.

So by virtue of Congress coming together and improving the Paulson plan, by virtue of the people's elected representatives having the opportunity to weigh in on this issue, and to hash out these problems and to work around the clock on the weekends, to make this a better bill, it will not cost $700 billion as has been widely reported in the original draft, for a variety of reasons: the potential upside of the assets that the government is buying. The insurance program. The most recent intervention that this Congress passed in the GSEs was estimated at $300 billion in costs. It was actually scored at $25 billion in cost. So it's important that the taxpayers understand that because the Congress has moved forward on this issue, it will be a smaller tab for the taxpayer. But it will be an effective intervention to restore the confidence necessary to avoid the kind of panic that we haven't seen in generations in this country.

This is no longer the Paulson-President's plan. Because of the work that Chairman Frank and the Republican negotiators have done, this is a better bill. Better for the taxpayer. No golden parachutes for CEOs who drive their companies into the ground and walk away with millions. None of the special interest projects that concerned so many people on our side. But most importantly the evidence is overwhelming that we must act.

It is always difficult to compile legislation this complex under such a short time frame. We are up against a short time frame because of the markets, because of the holidays, because of the natural calendar and our political cycle. The only thing worse than that is the kind of legislation that will result in the aftermath of the debris that remains after a financial collapse.

And so I stand here today willing to support this bipartisan compromise that has been hashed out over these last several days, that is such an improvement over what we began a week ago, but is so important to the financial architecture – not just of investment firms and speculators and people who got too-cute-by-half with someone else's money, but someone who is willing to support this bill because it is so important to the seniors, the savers, the merchants, and the farmers who need to understand that the confidence will be there in their banking system, that they don't have to withdraw their funds and stick them under the mattress. That our country's free market system is still the greatest in the world and that this intervention will allow those credit markets to unlock, and we'll be able to unwind and deleverage this marketplace and move forward together.

So I compliment my Chairman. I compliment our Republican negotiators, Mr. Blunt and Mr. Cantor, and I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I yield back my time.

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